My attempts to battle the "dark side" as discussed in the prior thread have been hit and miss since I have come back. I stay distant, get dragged in, pull back, get dragged back in, have my emotions affected by how my stocks are doing (and sometimes it is as stupid as worrying about MAXIMIZING performance (can be as stressful as anything else in the market), and not just making good investments), or such things, and then I have to pull back.

As I have laid out before I am trying to become more passive of an investor. And it has been very difficult to find such a portfolio. I have tried on a few stocks and discarded them along the way and held onto NVDA, SHOP, and ANET, now discarding SHOP for now. I added and then dropped TTD, and never did end up diversifying out as I needed more ANET. Align is certainly a great candidate, but I have not had the time to do so (and did not feel the immediate need). And since there is not much news about ANET (at all, that I have not already dug up) it is nice and quiet. The news with NVDA is always interesting, but NVDA is so big that any piece of news usually means little to underlying business, so I can just casually glance and observe.

So, to date, being semi-passive, and semi-active, seems to be, the secret sauce of enjoying the market, successfully investing, but not having it absorb or control your life. As I see with my son (and as I am sure has been me more often than I care to admit) even when one is away from the computer/devices, one is still not living in the moment in life. Unless it is your job, or utter passion (and clearly stocks are a passion of mine, technology is, etc., but I have so much more in life, and it is not my profession, although I use it far better than any peer I can find in my own non-technology business (if such exists anymore)), you need to find a fair balance.

A test. Try to go a day without staring at your phone (at all) while stopped at a light (not easy as those lights are soooooooo long). Do not pull out your phone while walking (Apple Watch is fine, it simply enhances without absorbing you - I love it for that, and how it more personalizes and improves messaging on a human scale). Do not think about any device when you are away from home, shopping, at the bar, whatever. See if you can truly relax and are living in the moment of there and then. Heck, try not to surf, for one day, during commercials on the tele. If you cannot achieve this challenge for one day, you may need to work on it. If you can, then you are probably doing just fine.

Now I shall try to live in the moment of paying my eBills (ickkk), and dealing with the horde of new potential business (a good thing, but so exhausting) coming my way, so I can add more into my soon to reach investing goals, and without further failing the above test, get done with work and free up hordes of time when I can so invest myself in the cyber or whatever else I want to do because I freed myself up to do what I was doing in the moment, and using technology on a human scale.

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